This blog features my weekly column called "What's up in the sky". It is published every Saturday in the Ellensburg newspaper, Daily Record (http://www.kvnews.com/). While my postings will be most accurate for Central Washington, readers throughout the northern USA may find something of use.

Thursday, June 22, 2017

The Ellensburg WA sky for the week of 6/24/17

Saturday: “Mom,
I can’t sleep. It is too light out!” A poor excuse you say? Good astronomy
skills, I say. The latest sunset of the year happens this week. Surprisingly,
the earliest sunrise and the latest sunset do not both happen on the longest
day of the year, the day of the summer solstice. The earliest sunrise occurs
just before the longest day and the latest sunset occurs just after the longest
day. This phenomenon relates to the angle of the Sun’s path near rising and
setting. In Ellensburg, that angle is about 66 degrees near the first day of
summer. Because of the Earth’s orbit, which causes the Sun’s apparent motion,
the angles are not symmetric. The asymmetries in orbital angles leads to the
asymmetry in rise and set times. By the way, picking a specific night to give
you the “can’t sleep because it is too light out” line may just be an excuse
because the sunset times change by only a few seconds each day in June. This
year, the sun sets between 9:01 and 9:02 p.m. between June 22 and June 29.

Sunday: The
New Moon was yesterday which means that the month of Ramadan has ended. During
the month of Ramadan, healthy adult Muslims are expected to fast between
sunrise and sunset. Fasting during Ramadan is one of the five pillars of Islam,
along with prayer, charity, belief in the Muslim faith, and a pilgrimage to
Mecca. The festival of breaking the fast, known as Eid al-Fitr, starts tonight.

Monday: Jupiter
is three fists held upright and at arm’s length above the southwest horizon at
9:30 p.m. At this same time, Saturn is one fist above the southeast horizon.

Tuesday: Don’t
wait until a week from today to go to those wimpy firecracker shows. Find the
hypergiant star Rho Cassiopeiae. Astronomers think that Rho Cassiopeiae will
likely go supernova (explode) in the near future. Of course, for stars, near
future might mean today. It might mean 20,000 years from now. Rho Cassiopeiae
is in the constellation Cassiopeia the queen. At 11:00 tonight, Cassiopeia
looks like the letter “W” about three fists held upright and at arm’s length
above the northeast horizon. Rho Cassiopeiae is about a finger’s width to the
right of the rightmost star in the “W”. Once you find it you’ll be thinking,
“Big deal, I can hardly see it.” Although it is barely visible to the naked
eye, it is actually very bright. It is the 20th most luminous star
in the sky, a whopping 550,000 times more luminous than the Sun.

Wednesday: Star light. Star bright. The first star you see tonight
might be Arcturus, six fists above the south horizon right after sunset. You’ll
be able to see Jupiter earlier but it won’t facilitate your wish coming true.

Thursday: Venus is one and a half fists above the east horizon at 4:30 a.m.

Friday: Happy
Asteroid Day (http://www.asteroidday.org/),
the day we celebrate avoiding the destruction of the Earth by an undiscovered
asteroid. There are a million asteroids in the Solar System with the potential
to strike Earth and destroy a city. Astronomers have discovered only 1% of
them. Asteroid Day is an effort to educate the public and encourage policy
makers to fund this important effort. King Tut may have celebrated an ancient
Asteroid Day by asking his assistants to make a dagger out of a broken-off
asteroid that landed on Earth. Astronomers discovered that the blade of the
knife contained much more nickel than is found in terrestrial iron, an amount
consistent with iron meteorites, especially with one found 16 years ago in
northern Egypt. For more information about the dagger, go to http://goo.gl/BHBivd.

The
positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically
accurate for the entire week. For up to date information about the night sky,
go to https://nightsky.jpl.nasa.gov/planner.cfm.